Sandra Field - Untouched

As he slipped his feet into the first pair of rubber boots, Ruth remarked with rather overdone casualness, ‘Jenessa, I was just talking to Marylou—her ten-thirty appointment was cancelled; you should take a run over.’

‘I don’t have the time,’ Jenessa said shortly. As Finn stood up, she knelt at his feet, pressing on the toes of the boots to see how they fit, her shirt pulled tight over the slim line of her back. ‘They seem a little small,’ she said dubiously, glancing up at him. ‘If we do any amount of walking, it’s really important to get a good fit.’ .

With a directness that no longer surprised her, he said, ‘Who’s Marylou?’

‘The hairdresser next door,’ she answered repressively. ‘I think you should try a half-size larger.’

He did so, and said with a satisfied grunt, ‘They feel better—maybe I will walk outside in them, if that’s okay.’ The smile he gave Ruth would have charmed the birds from the trees, Jenessa thought sourly; she got the tail end of it as he added, ‘Come with me, Jenessa; you can probably tell if I’ve got the right ones better than I can.’

She trailed up the steps behind him. He walked across the front lawn, glanced at Marylou’s sign and wrapped his fingers around Jenessa’s elbow. ‘If I’ve got to take to the woods with a woman, I’d at least prefer her to look like one,’ he said, and steered her unceremoniously toward Marylou’s side-door.

Jenessa’s jaw had dropped. She snapped it shut, dug her heels into the grass and sputtered, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘Getting you a haircut. Maybe she’ll do mine at the same time.’

‘You can shave your head for all I care,’ Jenessa stormed, tugging fruitlessly at his fingers. ‘My hair’s fine as it is and Ruth’s mother, who lives right across the street, is undoubtedly glued to the window watching us. This’ll be all over town by evening.’

‘Then you’d better stop struggling, hadn’t you?’ he said.

He was a good five inches taller than she and stronger by far. Disconcertingly strong, she thought with a quiver of unease. ‘What do you do for your living?’ she asked.

‘If I’m not allowed to ask personal questions, neither are you. Come along.’

One thing Jenessa had learned in her life was when to give up fighting the odds. Vowing to herself that no matter where she and Finn Marston went she’d walk him through every bog she could find until he begged for mercy, she stalked into Marylou’s beauty parlor.

Marylou favored frilly curtains, crocheted mats and artificial flowers; Finn’s big body looked totally out of place. Marylou herself was plump and pretty, her forgetme-not-blue eyes concealing a shrewd grasp of business. With frigid politeness Jenessa said, ‘Marylou, this is Finn Marston—I’m guiding for him. He wants a haircut.’

Finn had been looking around with interest. He pointed to a photo of a woman’s head that had been mounted on the wall and said, ‘Could you give Jenessa that cut, Marylou?’

‘Sure I could—it’d look real nice on her.’

Jenessa glared at him. ‘He’s the one who needs the haircut. Not me.’

Marylou said amiably, ‘I’m free until lunchtime, so I can do both of you. You first, Jenessa; you just sit down right over here.’

Finn said equally amiably, ‘I think she cut it with a hacksaw last time.’

Tom between fury and a crazy urge to laugh, Jenessa said, ‘What’s the matter, Finn—having problems with your masculinity? Got to assert yourself now because I’m the one who’ll be giving the orders once we leave town?’

Marylou was swathing her in a plastic cape at the sink. He said succinctly, ‘You’ve got it wrong—you have problems with your femininity. I’ll be back in a few minutes.’

Ryan, Ruth and now Finn—it was too much. But Marylou had turned on the tap full force and Finn was striding out of the door in his new rubber boots. Jenessa leaned back and closed her eyes, any number of clever rebuttals seething in her brain. She paid scant attention as Marylou shampooed and rinsed her hair, then combed it out and started to cut. Finn Marston had better not push her too far, she thought darkly; she hadn’t signed any contracts, so she could resign any time she liked and leave him in the lurch.

He didn’t think she looked like a woman. Whatever that meant.

One thing was sure: he hadn’t intended it as a compliment.

CHAPTER THREE

MARYLOU chattered on about the plot twists in the daily soap operas, keeping herself between Jenessa and the mirror. The blow-drier wafted warm air around Jenessa’s ears. Then Marylou brushed her hair in place, snipping a few loose ends with her scissors. She swivelled Jenessa round to face the mirror, saying with immense satisfaction, ‘Ever since I took that last seminar I’ve been wanting to get my hands on your hair, love—not bad, eh?’

Stunned, Jenessa looked at the stranger in the glass. Her hair was now tapered over her ears, emphasizing the slender length of her neck and the shape of her eyes with their brilliant green irises, and bringing her cheekbones into new prominence; wisps of hair, polished like the cherrywood to which Ruth had compared it, softened her forehead and clung to her nape. ‘It doesn’t even look like me,’ she said stupidly.

The door creaked open. Then another reflection joined hers in the mirror: the man who was the cause of this. He was staring straight at her, dark blue eyes meeting green. He looked, she thought in utter panic, like a hunter who had caught sight of his prey.

‘Looks nice, doesn’t it?’ Marylou said complacently. ‘I won’t charge you full price, dear, because it gave me the chance to try something new. Did you say you wanted a cut, Mr Marston?’

With a palpable effort Finn dragged his gaze from Jenessa’s. ‘Just a trim,’ he said.

Jenessa got up, threw a couple of bills on the counter and croaked, ‘I’ll be at Ruth’s.’ She ran outside and across the lawn, feeling the breeze on her bare neck, and had she been asked she couldn’t have said what—or whom—she was fleeing.

In Ruth’s kitchen she skidded to a halt. Ruth, Stephen and Ruth’s mother Alice were all in the kitchen; Alice was the last person Jenessa wanted to see. If her brain had been working, she thought frantically, she would have realized Alice would have rushed straight over to Ruth’s on a fact-finding mission. Ruth said, ‘Jenessa—your hair is gorgeous!’

‘My, my,’ Alice said coyly, ‘never knew you to change your looks for a man, Jenessa. He must be someone pretty special.’

Jenessa could not begin to answer this. She reached out for Stephen, cuddling him and playing with his pudgy little fingers. ‘How’s the new tooth, sweetie?’ she babbled. ‘I’d love a cup of tea, Ruth. Stevie’s getting home tonight, isn’t that what you told me?’

‘No,’ said Ruth, ‘I never told you that. He’s not back until next week.’ Taking pity on her friend, she said firmly, ‘Mum, why don’t you run home and fetch us a few doughnuts to go with our tea? You make the best doughnuts in town.’

When Alice came back a few minutes later, Jenessa was ladling cereal into Stephen’s mouth and Ruth was determinedly discussing the local by-election. But Alice was not so easily discouraged. Into the first pause in the conversation she said, ‘Looked to me like you and that handsome Finn Marston were having a tiff on the front lawn, Jenessa—I hear you’re going into the woods with him, though.’

She managed to make this latter phrase sound thoroughly clandestine. ‘I’m guiding him, yes,’ Jenessa replied. ‘Oops, Stephen, we missed that one.’

‘After all this time—when I’d just about given up on you, dearie, I might as well tell you the truth—I do believe you’re finally falling in love,’ Alice crowed.